HGST unveils the Travelstar 5K1500, a tiny HDD with a 1.5TB capacity

HGST, which is now owned by Western Digital, has added a new model to its Travelstar family. The 5K1500, a 9.5mm model, is the first on the market to come with a 1.5TB capacity, which is 50 per cent more than the biggest hard drives on the market.

The drive is aimed at the growing market of external hard disk drives, high end laptops, all in one PCs and rack-mounted servers. HGST achieved this capacity by using three 500GB platters, a feat that has only been achieved by using some clever engineering in order to avoid issues related to shock (as the platters are much closer).

The drive adopted a 9.5mm form factor rather than a 7mm one which means that it might not fit some slim-and-light devices on the market. As for the rest of its specifications, HGST claims that the 5K1500 consumes a mere 500mW when idle, with a 5,400RPM spinning speed, 32GB cache and a 6Gbps SATA interface.